


face to face with someone new

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Episode: s01e21 Ragtag, F/M, Time Travel, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-31
Updated: 2017-05-31
Packaged: 2018-11-07 08:17:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11054985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: After being caught in Cuba, Simmons has a terrible request for Grant.





	face to face with someone new

**Author's Note:**

> **Warning:** for suicidal action and discussion.

Fitz is in the middle of pleading with Grant to remember they’re friends—as if that means more to him than what he owes to John—when everything goes to hell.

Grant knew it wouldn’t be fun, taking the two of them up in a quinjet to rendezvous with the Bus, but as John was pretty set on leaving _right away_ in case Coulson and May made it out of the trap they left at the barber shop, it was a necessity. He expected a little white-knuckled terror from Simmons, maybe something he could use to remind her of the good times, prove to her he could still be the white knight if only she’d come around and work for Centipede. He didn’t expect her to have a goddamn seizure.

She slips to the floor and he gets her in his lap, cushioning her head from the hard corners that are everywhere in the bay of a quinjet while two of the grunts he brought along hold Fitz in place. He’s yelling, making all kinds of idiot demands that wouldn’t do a damn bit of good even if Grant paid attention.

She stills as they dock with the Bus, and even though there are all sorts of mechanisms clicking into place to hold them and the wind’s howling past outside because of the shift in air pressure, it’s eerie quiet inside the cabin.

Simmons opens her eyes. Grant’s heart beats again. Then she focuses on him and startles so wildly she’d really hurt herself if he wasn’t still holding her.

“Hey, hey,” he shushes, “I got you.”

He can feel her heart pounding against his knees, feel the tension in her shoulders. “Ward?” she asks, sounding understandably cautious. But also, maybe, just a little hopeful.

He gives her one of his charming, agent of SHIELD smiles, the ones that always make her blush, just to settle her nerves a little. “Yeah? Who else would I be?”

She doesn’t blush. She reaches up, gentle fingers touch his cheek, slide over the cut she warned would scar. He thinks he might see tears in her eyes. “Thank goodness.”

The tension’s gone, leaving her weak and Grant more than a little confused. But there’s no time to wonder over it.

“Sir?” one of the grunts asks. Simmons stiffens at the voice.

Grant holds her shoulders steady and meets her eyes intently. “You good to stand or is there gonna be an encore?”

She takes a deep breath and, if he’s not wrong, takes stock of herself. “No, I’m fine for now.”

The “for now” worries him, but she’s already sitting up and they really do have to get a move on.

Despite what she said, she’s slow to stand, and it takes Fitz rushing over to get her to her feet. She ignores his worried questions, instead saving her focus for everything else—the quinjet, the grunts, the Bus when they finally get downstairs—which she takes in with a measuring intensity that puts Grant even more on edge than the seizure did.

John meets them in the lounge, and Grant leaves it to him to do the talking, taking the opportunity to keep an eye on Simmons. She’s still looking pale and for all she was relieved to see him back on the quinjet, she’s looking downright despondent now that she’s face-to-face with John.

“Don’t look so sad!” John says. He cups her cheek with one hand, forcing her to pay attention to him instead of everything _but_ him. “Nobody’s gonna hurt that pretty little brain of yours, so long as you-”

Fitz moves. Grant catches it—and the threat implicit in the speed of the motion—the same second Simmons does. She’s closer though and slaps his hand down with a cry. “No!”

Something small drops to the carpeted floor. Grant bends while Fitz struggles against the grunt holding him back.

“It’s one of those toy joy buzzers,” Grant says, holding it up so John can see.

“It’s an EMP,” Simmons says weakly.

“Simmons!” Fitz sounds heartbroken. And he should be. Not only has his idiotic plan—depending on the size of the pulse this thing puts out, it either would’ve knocked out John’s implants or the plane, and both would’ve ended in swift death for the two of them—failed, but it was Simmons who sabotaged it. That’s gotta sting.

She doesn’t look too happy about it herself.

Lucky for Fitz, John decides to be amused by the threat on his life. “Put him in the Cage and search him,” he says with an abrupt gesture in that direction. “If he’s got any other toys, shoot out one of his knees.”

Now Simmons looks _really_ unhappy, but any argument she would’ve made is silenced by John’s focusing on her while Fitz is dragged away.

“Gotta say, princess, I’m a little surprised. My boy here told me it’d take a little more incentive to have you switching sides.” There’s an emphasis on _incentive_ , just enough to have her wrapping her arms around herself and to have Grant’s hackles rising. He never okayed Simmons for the Incentives Program. He won’t deny it’d probably work, but he never okayed it.

She’s looking even worse standing there now than she did before. Small without Fitz next to her, pale as she was when he held her on the quinjet, and she’s even started shaking a little.

Grant shrugs out of his jacket and slips it over her shoulders, pulling her into his side as he does it. “She had a little episode while we were docking,” he says while he guides her to the couch.

“Oh?” John asks, curious. But not so curious he follows. He stays at the edge of the lounge, eyeing her critically from a distance. With all the work he’s had done, infection’s a real worry for him; he’s not fond of sick people.

“She had a seizure.” Grant sits her down and then situates himself on the coffee table in front of her. “Anything like that ever happen before?” he asks.

She hesitates, and that’s enough of that for John. “Get her straightened out,” he practically growls. But it’s John, so he slaps on a smiling face before turning on his heel and leaving for the lower level. “And hey, you might still get to keep one.”

Annoyance mingled with disgust wells up in Grant and he’s gotta fight to keep it off his face. Skye’s hatred still stings—and not just because that headbutt left him with an aching skull for days after. Not that he didn’t know the team would turn on him when they found out what he’d done, but there was part of him—a pathetic little kid part—that hoped maybe…

But it doesn’t matter. Skye and Fitz have made it clear they don’t give a shit about him anymore. Now it’s time to see where Simmons stands, if that little show she put on means she’s as smart as her SHIELD file says she is.

“Simmons?” he asks once even Raina has given up staring and filed out after John, leaving them all alone. He squeezes her shoulder. She’s looking at his side—at the gun he’s got holstered under his arm—in kind of a worrying way. He shifts his hip back so it’s that much farther from her. “You wanna tell me what all that was about?”

Painfully slowly, her face lifts. She swallows and says, firm and clear, “You have to kill me.”

He reels back, all thoughts of manipulation flying right out of his head. “What?” he croaks.

“You _have_ to,” she says urgently, taking his hand when he tries to pull away. “I know it doesn’t make any sense, but it’s the only way to stop it.”

“Stop what?” he asks while he studies her face. Maybe something happened in Portland. Maybe she really is sick.

She darts a quick look around, and it occurs to him she’s checking for threats. She did the same when they came on board too, didn’t she? When did she learn to do that?

“I don’t have time to explain properly—I have an hour at most and I’ve already wasted-” She cuts off with a glance towards the Cage. “I don’t have time. That’s why I need you to kill me.”

He scoffs and tries to lean back, but she’s got his hand between both of hers now. She’s running her thumb over his calluses while she talks. It’s a surprisingly intimate gesture from the woman who’s still on the blushing and giggling stage of her crush on him.

“You’re running out of time?” he demands. “So you want me to kill you?” He should be taking this to John, warning him that there’s a threat, one on a time limit, but he’s not okay with leaving Simmons alone right now, especially with the knives in the kitchen in easy reach.

“I’m from the future!” she blurts, only to flinch a second later. She looks over her shoulders like she’s afraid someone overheard.

“The future?” Grant deadpans once she faces him again.

She nods. “I know it sounds insane and you’re hardly who I would’ve chosen to tell, but I didn’t exactly choose to land _now_.”

There’s this number on all SciTech agents’ files. It’s just a little thing and it shares a line with innocent demographics like IQ and height and weight. Not all that important.

Unless you know it’s their rating on the Hetrick Scale, tells how likely they are to go completely off the deep end. Simmons jumped from a three to a five after her fall from the Bus. Grant’s thinking they maybe should’ve upped her a couple more points.

“It’s the truth,” she says sternly.

He searches her face, this time looking for all the tell-tale signs of deception. There aren’t any, but that doesn’t mean much. If she believes it, it’s not really a lie, is it?

“Why, then?” he asks.

Her lip quivers and she looks away. Her hands tighten around his. “There’s something coming, something old and evil. HYDRA’s god.”

“HYDRA doesn’t worship any god,” Grant says instead of laughing in her face. He’s been on the inside—deep inside—for more than a decade, he’s pretty sure he’d have heard if he was in a cult.

“It’s a monster,” Simmons presses on. “And two years from now-” her hands shift around his, clutching tight- “Two years from now, it comes back.” Tears shimmer in her eyes and her focus is fixed firmly on the front of his shirt. “ _I’m_ why it comes back to Earth. It’s my fault so many people die and Daisy’s brainwashed and-” Her voice cracks, and she meets his eyes. “It killed the man I love. He died protecting _me_. He’d still be alive if I hadn’t-” She looks away.

If she is crazy—and he is absolutely still thinking that’s the case—she’s committed to it. All this emotion, all this hurt she’s carrying, it’s … a lot.

“So why do you have to die?” he asks. “Why not just not do it?”

She shakes her head, getting that look on her face he knows so well, the one that says he’s just an idiot specialist and doesn’t understand what he’s talking about. But unlike Fitz’ version of this face, Simmons’ says it nicely. Because it’s Simmons. “I told you, I only have a limited amount of time before my consciousness snaps back to the future. There’s no telling whether my younger self will even remember any of this. I’d hoped maybe I could-” She bites the words back, but he can guess them well enough.

“You hoped you’d land someplace else,” he guesses. “Sometime you could talk to one of the others, warn them so they could warn you?”

Her shoulders slump. It’s as good as an admission.

He shifts his hands so he’s got both of hers between his. “So why don’t you tell me? Let me take care of this monster for you?”

She lets out a pathetic little sound of disbelief.

“Come on,” he says, voice just a little teasing. “If this thing’s as bad as you say, I don’t want it showing up any more than you do.” Denial’s written plain as day across her face, so he pushes a little harder. “You would’ve trusted me to do it last month.”

This time she laughs. “No,” she says firmly. “ _She_ would have. But for me? A month ago I was standing this close to you, listening to your voice say things that- and your hand-” She closes her eyes. Simmons has never been all that emotional. Even when she was dying she kept it bottled up for the most part. So seeing her like this, emotions flickering across her face while she tries to rein them in, is kind of giving him the creeps.

Maybe she isn’t completely full of shit.

When she looks at him again, her expression is carefully closed off, but there are tears shining on her eyelashes. “It’s a parasite. Only it doesn’t require a living host to survive, it needs a dead one. When it comes back to Earth? It’s wearing _your_ body. You died,” she says, each word like a punch. “On some barren, alien hell. And that thing is going to drag your corpse back to Earth, wearing you like a suit.”

He can honestly say that mental image, of some alien wannabe god walking around in his corpse, throws him for a loop. That’s gotta be why she manages to get a hand on his sidearm before he catches her.

“Kill me,” she says, her voice cracking on the words. He doesn’t kid himself it’s due to the pressure he’s putting on her wrist. “Or let me do it myself. It’s the only way to stop him coming back.”

“No way,” he says, so readily it seems to surprise her. He doesn’t know why it should, they’re _friends_ , he’d never let anything happen to her. He holds her tight, pulling her hand away from his gun while his other hand cups her cheek. For a second, half a heartbeat, her eyes slip shut and her cheek drops into his palm before her jaw tenses and determination lights in her eyes. “We’ll figure this out, all right? Just tell me what happens and- Simmons?” he asks. Her eyes have gone wide, fixed on something far way—two years away if he’s any guess.

“Please,” she says and manages to lunge just once more for his sidearm before her eyes roll back.

He catches her, cushions her while her body betrays her so she doesn’t fall off the couch, and very nearly falls himself when something way too vivid and present to be a memory hits him.

He’s on his back. His whole body hurts but there are wells of pain that make him think this is worse than a bad fall. A figure hovers over him, a shadow he can’t make out because while the pressure on his chest increases past what his bones can handle, his vision slips away, up to the sky overhead. It’s the bluest blue Grant’s ever seen. There are two moons.

“Ward?” Simmons asks, her voice shaky. There’s no time to respond because the second the word is out of her mouth she’s clinging to him. He’s on the couch with her in his lap—he doesn’t even know how that happened—and she’s shaking, nails digging in tight enough he’s gonna have little crescent shaped bruises all over, and her breath’s falling over his neck in wet gasps.

“It’s okay,” he says, still fighting through the … the whatever-the-hell that was. “It’s okay. I got you.”

He runs his hand up and down her back, same way he did so many months ago while they bobbed in the ocean together. It takes her longer to pull herself out of it this time, which he chalks up to the relative safety of the Bus in mid-flight compared to the middle of the Atlantic. Fine with him; it gives him more time to sort through what’s happened.

What he just saw? That’s gotta be it, his death. And he was on an alien planet— _hell_ , she called it—killed by that thing, the god or whatever. And after that it supposedly takes over his body, walks it back to Earth so it can do all the shit that scared Simmons so bad.

Only that’s not quite what she said, is it? She talked about people dying and someone named Daisy being brainwashed and-

It washes over him like a cold shower, leaving him chilled against her warmth. The man she loved, that’s the real reason she wanted him to end this, so he lives.

“I couldn’t move,” she says, cutting into his thoughts. She’s settled, more or less, and he gives her enough space she can pull back. “It was like I was watching a film of my own life and I couldn’t do anything, I couldn’t stop her from betraying Fitz or-” her eyes drop to his sidearm and a sob bursts out of her.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay.” He rubs her shoulders while she presses her palm to her mouth, silencing herself. “I would never have done that to you, okay?”

She nods. It’s dim, but at least she seems to believe him. She wraps her arms around herself. “Was that what it was like when-” She cuts herself off and he knows from her guilty expression she’s asking about Lorelei. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” he says and leaves it at that. The truth is it wasn’t like that at all with Lorelei. He knew what he was doing every second, had complete control. He was like an addict who knew it was wrong, knew it’d get him killed, but wanted that hit anyway. “You remember?” he asks to change the subject.

She wipes at her eyes. “Everything,” she says bitterly. “Fitz and Garrett and-” she meets his eyes- “you.”

“Do you remember-” he stumbles over how to word it, how to ask if she remembers loving him enough she’d die for him, and ends on- “what’s gonna happen? How to stop it?”

She shakes her head. “No. I- I don’t know. There are- not memories exactly. Memories of memories? I don’t know,” she says again. He wonders if she realizes she’s playing with his hand, rubbing the pads of her fingers over his almost the way that other her was doing before.

“Do you believe it?” he asks. “All that stuff about the future and the god and-?” He stops himself before he can remind her it’s all gonna be her fault.

Not that she needs the reminder. She stills, wide eyes fixed on his. He’s never seen her so unsure. “I don’t know.”

He squeezes her hand. “Jemma, I-”

Her gaze slips from his and he knows, somehow, exactly whose voice it’s gonna be. “Well, isn’t this cozy?”

Simmons curls back, slipping off his lap. He gives her hand another squeeze while he stands to face Raina.

“What do you want?” he asks coldly.

“Garrett’s starting to wonder how hard it can be to scare one little biochemist into behaving,” she says. He guesses, from the tone and the phrasing, that it’s probably a direct quote. “I thought you’d appreciate the warning.”

Grant doesn’t need help, least of all from her, dealing with John. It’s on the tip of his tongue to tell her so when a small hand comes to rest at his shoulder.

“We do,” Simmons says. She angles around him in the narrow space between couch and coffee table. “We’ll be down in a minute. I’d like to change into something less … worn.”

Raina manages to turn a gracious nod into a mocking goodbye, then leaves them to it.

Grant waits a five-count after she’s out of sight before facing Simmons and letting his expression ask his question for him.

She’s still pale and her breath’s a little shaky when she sighs, but her hands are steady when she takes off his jacket and holds it out to him. “I imagine,” she says, turning her back on him so she can head for her bunk, “that Garrett will be less inclined to avenge himself on Fitz if he has his cure.”

“He will,” Grant says.

She nods once she’s got her sweater over her head. “Do you think he might also be willing to allow me access to the memory machine? The one he used on Coulson?”

He follows her into her bunk and spins her around. The space is so small she has to catch herself against him or lose her footing. It doesn’t escape his notice that she fits against him like she was made for him. “Are you sure about this?” he asks. His gut churns at the thought of letting her go into that machine, but if it helps them change the future…

She stares, lifts her hand until it almost brushes his healing cheek. She drops her hand to her side. “No,” she confesses. “But I’m not sure of anything else either.”

He sighs. “You get the cure, I’ll get you that machine. But you’re gonna be careful.”

A fond smile breaks over her face for a split second before her expression falls again. “Ward,” she says while he moves to leave.

He pauses at the door, waits while she hesitates.

“Thank you,” she says, “for not killing me.” Whatever she was going to say, it wasn’t that.

“It was never an option,” he says and leaves her to it so he can enjoy the few seconds to himself to breathe and think. They’ll fix this. Somehow, they’ll fix this. Together. Just like they were in that future. Only this time no alien god is getting between them. He’ll make sure of it.

 


End file.
